employ murdering assholes as police.

Even if this case was an accident, it points to the problem with guns in our society.

We have endless examples of why our 2nd amendment should be enforced as written.

Good luck with that.

That's an astoundingly high settlement for an 89-year-old victim who probably didn't live long after being shot.

And, please, don't anybody get on me about being ageist. The stark reality is that, in a typical lawsuit for someone injured or killed by negligence, a major component of the damages is lost wages -- how much more the victim would have earned over the rest of his or her life without the defendant's misconduct, minus what he or she will earn now (maybe less for someone rendered partly disabled, or nothing at all for someone killed or left totally disabled). A younger person who's deprived of many years of expected earnings will get a higher award.

Another main component is conscious pain and suffering. A 20-something who's left with permanent pain, which the expert witness says will last for decades, will get way more than a senior with the same injury, who in turn will get more than someone who died quickly and so didn't experience much pain.

In fact, the settlement is so high that it makes me suspicious that something else was going on. Maybe this cop had a bad record and should have been sacked years ago, and the municipality didn't want that fact to come out at trial.